The Circle of Fifths - How to Actually Use It

Hi guys, how do you do? She wanted to give you a lesson today on the

circle

of

fifths

. The

circle

of

fifths

is an incredibly powerful musical tool, but unfortunately a lot of people don't really understand how to use it, it can be quite confusing, so I'll show you two things first: what it is, some really quick ways to remember it in a minute or two, you should know it forever and then, and then I'll show you what to

actually

do with it and why it's very useful musically, so start with um, I'm going to build a circle of fifths and, uh, what we're going to do is arrange the 12 notes around this circle, but instead of doing it in order, let's separate them by the interval of a fifth, I'll show you that in a second, so I'll start with C at the top, a lot of musical things center around the note C , you should get quite used to that.

Now, um, and then after C, we're going to find a note that's separated by a fifth, so I'll show you on the little keyboard here, hopefully, you'll remember what a fifth is. It's only seven semitones, um, so. starts on c, you go up one, two, three, four, five, six, seven and that number over there, g is one fifth away from c, so that would be the next note on the wheel and then from g we're going to go to another fifth, so from g one two three four five six seven uh there are much better ways to find a fifth and count uh every half step.

I made a video a long time ago called how basic chords work and I cover all of that if you'd like to check it out. but anyway the next note is D so that would be the next note on the wheel and after D we would go to a and I'll just fill in the rest here b goes to F sharp you gotta be careful with this one um it starts on b and count up to a fifth, you end up here on F sharp anyway, that's half the circle right there and then to get the other half, we could

actually

keep going around, but it's usually a lot easier just go back to the top and start count in the other direction so we'll do that if you go back to c and then go down a fifth you end up on f so f is the next note and then from f get b flat the same kind of thing you have to be careful there f to b flat and then if you continue, you would get e flat to flat and d flat and that's it, there's an offensive circle uh, now if you're trying To remember the attack circle, of course, one way is to do what I just did.

You start at the top on c and go around the fifth. The technique is in the name. Everything is separated by a fifth, but it probably is. It's not the easiest way to remember it, I recommend using mnemonics, just a couple of little sayings and you can remember it, which I always teach, these are a little stupid, but Carolyn gets drunk and eats butterflies, that's how you remember the right half and then the other. I left half of Carolyn Fodle's beads like I said, they're a little weird and if I'm teaching a little kid I do it a little bit in church, but anyway if you reflect on it for a moment it's hard to forget . that and there you have it so now there's an offensive circle like I said uh the important part is what you actually do with it and this is where a lot of people get stuck so this is the critical point and if you forget everything else I say in this video this is what you have to remember what I just wrote c g d all of these can represent different things these could represent notes they could represent chords or they could represent clefs and the circle of fifths is used in all three ways So we'll start by using this as an array of notes and I'll show you a couple of things you can do with that, so we'll start by thinking of these as notes and when you think of them as notes, let's get started. in C for a second, let's say we want to create a C major chord.

You probably already know how to do this, but be patient, so we say we want to make a C major chord, but we don't actually do it. Now you know what's in it, the first note of course is obviously going to be C, but it's a three note chord and now we have to figure out the other two notes. If you remember the formula for a major chord, the middle note is major. third, which is two full steps, so just to show you the keys again, starting on C, you would go up two full steps and end on E, so that's your middle note, but figuring out the next note can be difficult because this is quite away from c, so you have to count a lot to get there, but this note is a fifth and if you know your setting circle, you will immediately know that if you go up a fifth you will get to g is written right there, which means that the next note It's a D and there's the C major chord.

Now let's do a slightly more complicated example, so let's say you're trying to figure out an A-flat major 7 chord. Now chances are, you don't know this chord from the beginning, so this is a four-note chord, so there are three mystery notes here now to find this second note, the same technique as the C major chord, you're going to go up two full steps, so from a flat, one full step up would be B flat and then the next it would be c. I'll show you the keys just to make it easier. a flat, b flat and then c, so there's your major third, there's no real shortcut for that note. but it's not hard to figure out the middle note or this third note which is a fifth, just like the C chord, so if you know your circle of fifths, you go over a tick, remember we're going up a fifth, you know? no less than a fifth um so that puts us in E flat and that's the next note of the chord and that's the hardest one to figure out uh or it would be if you didn't know your circle of fifths now for the last note, this is very simple when you have a major seventh chord, this last note is just one, one note below your octave, so if we go up to a flat, go down one, you get g natural, so you have g and there's your flat major.

The seven chord is much easier to do if you know your circle fits, otherwise you'll have to count a lot more, so that's a great use of the circle of fifths. When you think of it in terms of notes, you can use it too. is to harmonize notes saying that you are writing a melody and you are trying to write you have a melodic line and you are going to write another melodic line that is let's say a fifth higher which is a very common harmony to make you are in voice music all the time, know your circle of fifths makes it a lot easier to do it, but there are many different kinds of useful ways to use it note-wise, now the second way to use it, and like I said, this is something fundamentally different, you're not thinking about this anymore. as notes, now you're thinking of them as chords, okay, so I'm going to show you why it would be useful to think of these as chords, so let's say this C now represents a C major the G represents a G major D major A major and so on, so let's also say we're in the key of B flat right and our root chord in this key is B flat major now there are two chords that are probably the most important chords in any key, which is your root chord, so in this case this B flat major and then there's your dominant chord, your fifth chord, that v chord is the chord that provides the tension that kind of really tense part of the key and it's like the opposite pole of your root chord. , so if you have to count and think, what is my five B flat C, it's hard to find that chord quickly, but if you know your circle? of fifths, you immediately know that your v chord is f, so that's our dominant chord that provides all that tension and of course you can do the same with any other key if you're in the d key, you know your v chord is an A major chord if you're in the key of D flat your v chord is an A flat chord so it's a really useful way to use the settings circle in terms of final third chords and I think that the most valuable way is to use it as a key map, so it would be C major F major B flat major all the way around, so when you think of this as keys, there are a couple of really interesting things that will help you first and I think most It's important, especially if you're writing music, because it shows you which keys are similar to each other.

What do I mean by that? If you look at, let's say the C key, we'll see it on my little keyboard again. um the key of C all the major keys have seven notes in them the key of c has c d e f g a and b so these are the key of g if you look at the notes in the key of g you have g a b c d e and then f sharp um so it's actually it's very similar , has all the same notes except that the F is an F sharp now, so let's say you are writing a piece of music in the key of C and you want to change the key if you know that the key of G is very similar to the key of C , then you know it won't be that hard to get your music from c to g.

The tricky part of a key change is arranging the new notes in the key. It may be accepted by your listener if you throw a bunch of new sounds at it all of a sudden, it may sound very jarring and it just doesn't fit, but if you just have one different note, it's a much easier transition to make. so c and g is a very easy key change to make, but let's look at the key of f sharp for a second, this is on the opposite end of the circle that fits here and what that means is that there are almost no notes similar to each other. c and F sharp, so the notes in F sharp major would be F sharp G sharp a sharp b c sharp D sharp and this you would actually call E sharp.

I won't go into the details of why you would call this E sharp and It's not today, I'll save that for a later lesson, but the point is that almost all notes are different, which means that if you want to do a C pitch change to F sharp, you have a lot of new notes that you have to push in there and try to get the listener to accept everything at once and it's very difficult to do that without sounding really abrupt, so chances are that if you were trying to change keys between C and F sharp, I probably would. a bunch of transition keys that you can go from c to g, which is an easy key change, maybe from g to a, they're not too far apart and you work your way around the wheel entering one new note at a time. and trying to get it comfortable before you get to the F sharp and that goes for any key, if you wanted to go from D to the key of A flat, they are very far apart and it's very difficult to go between them, but Let's say you want going from D to the key of G, that's not difficult at all to do, so it's a really powerful composition tool.

You can think of it in terms of this kind of keymap. Now the other thing that it's actually used for when we're thinking about this in terms of keys: it can show you almost immediately how many sharps or flats there are in a key and they can even show you what those sharps or flats are, so we'll do a couple of examples if you start. In the clef of C, of ​​course, C has no sharps or flats, so there's not much to think about, but let's say you're in the treble clef, the treble clef has a sharp because it's just kind of a tick over.

The ignition. the wheel key of d would have two sharps the key of a would have three and so on um and you can tell what they are almost immediately let's say we're in the key of g move that out of the way the treble clef you're going to have a sharp, It's going to be an f, like you start two ticks back and that's where the sharps start, if you go to the key of D, it's also going to have an F sharp, but it's going to add a C sharp in a key of A, you're going to have an F sharp, a C sharp and a G sharp.

As you move around the wheel, you start putting in the sharps one at a time starting at f, so you can start from here and count around um and stop with a note between the key you're looking at, so a would be f sharp c sharp g sharp pretty simple now if you turn the wheel and go back to the left you actually look at the flat keys so again c there are no sharps or flats but if you go to the key of f f has a flat the clef of b flat has two flats e flat has three flats and so on um now If you look at the clef of f, remember that it has a flat and the flats actually start here on b flat, so the bass clef would have a B flat if you were to go to the key of B flat, it's kind of confusing, okay, let's say we're in the key of B flat, obviously you'd have a B flat and then you'd have an E flat.

The flats continue to progress around the circle counterclockwise and basically stay one tick in front of the key. you're looking at, so if you're looking at the key of E flat you would have a B flat, an E flat and an A flat and that's basically how you would use a circle of fifths in terms of keys. Now there are many other ways to use this, the point I'm trying to get at here is that it's a visual tool, it's a way of organizing notes in this kind of pattern of fifths and this pattern becomes useful for all different things, Whether you're thinking about notes individually or trying to build chords or scales, don't we talk about that?

But it's the same idea, you could look at these letters as if they were chords, observing how theyThey relate chords to each other, especially the root of the dominant chord. chord relationship and then you can also see them as keys, so that's basically it. I know this lesson is a little more advanced than some of the others I've done, you need to know a few things to be at this point. But even if you don't, you can learn the circle of fifths in just a minute or two. It's really simple and will be more and more useful to you as you learn music and put things together in your head, so thanks for watching, yeah If you have any comments or questions, I will do my best to get back to you. for you and yes, thanks again